The video

Enjoy our lovely podcast of Love: A Guide for Amateurs

Tell us everything you know about love

Download our eBook

Love: A Guide for Amateurs

loving yourself is half the battle

Self-love is about reconnecting with nature and growing some of my own food has also been helpful as has getting rid of that box of mind tricks that helps to maintain the status quo ‘TV’ is also helpful. Always be kind to you, there is but one of you beautiful human

One of the most important things I have done for self-love is to find a way to reduce my working week by one day, leaving only 4 days that I slave away like a lunatic. To me a job especially a full time job is very harmful to mind, body and spirit so if you can find a way to do less harm to you then please do

One of the things I have learned is to start by being kind and compassionate to yourself and to find ways of nurturing and loving you – you spectacular speck of conscious awareness spinning in infinity in the all that is

Love is the spirit of life in the adorned body of mankind

“The distinguishing features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment” Freud

“The most widespread misunderstanding is that which assumes that giving is “giving up” something, being deprived of, sacrificing..” Erich Fromm

Tell us everything you know about love

Love is about loss, trust, of fear of abandonment. Elusive. Uncertainty yet searching for a recognition

“What Freud called ‘normal’ everyday feelings of jealousy have fallen out of fashion and have become a source of embarrassment for those unlucky enough to experience it”

Love: A Guide for Amateurs

“the capacity to be conscious of the self and the other is not the stuff of match me.com, rather the ordinary magic of love”

Love: A Guide for Amateurs

Read our eBook Love: A Guide for Amateurs

“Before we give up on love it might be helpful to know that we’re all ultimately love amateurs. Read a love letter between Freud and his fiancé Martha, full of silliness and desire, and you might realise that even for the father of psychoanalysis putting love into words is really hard”

Love: A Guide for Amateurs

“is the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try to reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into a closed and rational system”

Do not be content with showing friendship in words alone. Let your heart burn with loving-kindness for all who may cross your path

When a thought of war comes, oppose it by a stronger thought of peace. A thought of hatred must be destroyed by a more powerful thought of love

Grief is the shape of the love lost. Love lasts forever, life ends.

A Pansexualist sees every drive as ultimately a sexual one. It really is all about sex.

Nothing like standing up in front of a group of people talking about love to make you feel like a wronger

Jesus was really attractive

My precious darling…Even when you use endearments, I don’t entirely like it…I don’t want you to love me for qualities you assume in me, you must love me as irrationally as other people love.

Love is being overjoyed that that person exists – for a long time!

I’ve been an activist most of my life and really passionate about what I do. But it means I’ve got a superego the size of a tank. So my top tip for love is try to be less busy.

Always remember to do the washing-up the night before.

Don’t intellectualise it feel it

I know that i have heard many people feeling sad that they have not been loved enough and just a handful briefing that they are not able to experience the feeling or to offer their love to another human being.

When you are heart broke and feel you have lost love remember, and cherish the memory when you experienced love.

Love is a Moebius strip, a sphere with two sides

To love you have to stop referencing yourself. You haven’t had the same experience. You don’t know how it feels. You don’t know what the ‘people around you’ should do or what they think or feel.

This is what we have to say about sex and psychopaths

This week we want to know from you how you get on with the people you work with?

This week we want to know from you how we can build a more loving society?

The Book HERE

This week we will mainly be trying to talk about love in a way that doesn’t make us sound like my mum’s ‘pinions of the impact of Facebook on Western Society

“I ask questions, listen to the answer and remember to follow-up” P on #howtogetonatwork

“Patience. Patience. Patience. Patience.More patience.Hanging in there.More patience.Taking the long view.Patience” J

“experience anger (my own and others) without running away from it” J

In the run up to Valentines, intimacy sounds like another continent. A tropical tax haven for rich thin folk

“Enduring extreme emotions with patience (er… sometimes)” J in Edinburgh

“Sometimes asking difficult questions, or at least willing to dive into the less-easy issues” Julia

“health workers are expected to care for their people – so they need some care too” Antonia, true expert

“with people in frontline jobs just listen try standing in their shoes for a moment” Antonia

This has already been a bad  year for love and cracking one for fear

“Socratic as it might be, this  capacity to be conscious of the self and the other is not the stuff of match me.com, rather the ordinary magic of love“

“Exquisite listening – be in the moment when listening to someone” Antonia, expert on intimacy

“By praising them for what they do well, and ignoring the rest” Gary’s tip on getting on with people

“to #love you need thin skin and be prepared to be hurt that’s how love works but gives more than anything else” E, Redditch

“love involves over-estimating the differences between one man and another”

Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through The Goalposts Of Life

Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns In The Bed

Get Your Tongue Outta My Mouth ‘Cause I’m Kissing You Goodbye

Her Teeth Were Stained, But Her Heart Was Pure

I Would Have Writ You A Letter, But I Couldn’t Spell Yuck!

Mama Get The Hammer (There’s A Fly On Papa’s Head)

You’re The Reason Our Baby’s So Ugly

The Last Word In Lonesome Is “me”

The Next Time You Throw That Fryin’ Pan, My Face Ain’t Gonna Be There

Who You Gonna Believe, Me Or Your Lying Eyes?

Sadly romantic ideas about love conquering all are tested in the extreme during economic crisis

One of the motivations to learn about love is the desire to circumnavigate the inherent perils and pains of getting close to people

In order to survive working life in 2015, Surviving Work has dropped its deep cynicism about campaigns and people-with-answers and is launching the #LoveAmateurs campaign

Don’t know about you but 2014 left me feeling a little short on love

This week we will mainly be trying to talk about love in a way that doesn’t make us sound like my mum’s ‘pinions of the impact of Facebook on Western Society

Send us your questions and top tips about how to get good at love

I haven’t worked since…

ss2.mp3

Send us your tips and stories of how to survive work 

I needed to work out where I belonged….

@SurvivorStories17.mp3

I needed to be myself…..

mystory16.mp3

the culture of targets at work is impossible….

@MyStory13.mp3

Send us your tips and stories of how to survive work 

when I came back to work after hospital I was suspended…..

@UL.mp3

My dad suffered from workplace stress…..

@SG-story1.mp3

I love my job, that’s the thing…..

@SG-story.mp3

I was working in a textile factory in Blackpool….

@LC-story.mp3

I’ve just returned to work after 5.5 months after my personal life got really messy….

@ca-story.mp3

I’ve just had a major crisis at work

@Anonymous10

Losing the love at work

@Anonymous9

I’m set to lose 5 grand a year

@Anonymous3

What being paranoid schizophrenic has taught me about working life

Bharat’s story

I think I needed things to go wrong before they went right

@Anonymous1

How do comedians deal with anxiety on stage?

tom interview

Don’t let anything hold you back from doing what you love

Marion’s work

What makes work work for you when you’re in trouble

what helped

What you should do if you can’t take it any more

Marion’s top tip

Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemy – putting ourselves down and not standing up to that voice that says “loser”.

Can you work and have a personality disorder?

work and BPD

How to have fun on a psychiatric ward

Star Wards

Freud loves twitter

mirror mirror

A top tip from a superhero

Jess’s top tip

How to become a tourettes superhero

Touretteshero

How to ask for help from other people

asking for help

Nick Clegg is not lonely

How Elsie lost her job and started again

Elsie’s story

crack monkey

is it ticking

How Elsie met the Gaffer of the NHS

Elsie meets David

Risks and protections